CURRICULUM VITAE
G. Thomas Couser Professor of English
Director of Disability Studies
860.443.4873 516.463.6743
EDUCATION
1977 Ph.D. American Civilization,
Dissertation: "American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode"
Teaching Assistantship,1974-76
University Fellowship, 1972-74
1968-69 Graduate Study in Eighteenth-Century Literature,
Reynolds Scholarship for Foreign Study (
1968 B.A. English, summa cum laude,
Perkins Prize for Best Senior in Literary Studies
High Distinction in Major, Phi Beta Kappa
TEACHING
July 2003 NEH Institute for School Teachers: Disability Studies, UIC.
Dir. David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder, and Linda Ware.
Two-day unit on life writing and disability.
July 2000 NEH Institute for College Teachers: Disability Studies, SFSU
Dir. Paul Longmore and Rosemarie
Two-day unit on life writing and disability.
Oct. 1995
Varieties of Post-structural Criticism (Short course)
1982-
Introduction to Disability Studies
Disability in Literature
Contemporary Life Writing (graduate)
Modern American Life Writing (graduate)
Literature and the American West
Methods of Literary Study (graduate)
American Autobiography (graduate and undergraduate)
Sources of the American Literary Tradition (graduate)
Native American Literature
Representations of "Indians" in American Culture
Analysis of Prose (graduate)
Twentieth-Century American Fiction
American Renaissance
Modern Literature
American Literature Survey
Composition and Literature
American Short Story
1976-82
American Literature (survey, period, and genre courses)
Autobiography in
Innocents Abroad
American Studies Seminar:
American Studies: Models and Methods
Introduction to Literary Analysis
Expository Writing
1974-76
1975: ADULT EDUCATION,
1970-74
1969-72
SCHOLARSHIP
IN PROGRESS OR FORTHCOMING
"Fashioning Fathers: Narratives of Filiation ." Book manuscript in progress.
"In
"Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation."
Forthcoming in LifeWriting (
"Presenting Absent Fathers in Contemporary Memoir." Forthcoming in Southwest Review 90.4 (2005): 634-48.
Quality-of-life Writing: Illness, Disability, and Representation."
Forthcoming in MLA volume on teaching life writing 2006.
"Disability as Diversity: A Difference with a Difference." Invited essay, forthcoming in Ilha do Desterro,
(
"Double Exposure: Performing Conjoined Twinship." Film and the Problem Body, ed. Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic. Volume under consideration.
"Autobiography." Encyclopedia of Disability. Ed. Gary Albrecht. Sage, forthcoming.
BOOKS
Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing.
Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life
Writing.
True Relations: Essays on Autobiography and the Postmodern. Ed. G. Thomas Couser and Joseph Fichtelberg.
Altered Egos: Authority in American
Autobiography.
American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode.
ARTICLES, ESSAYS, AND CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
"Paradigms' Cost: Representing Vulnerable Subjects." Literature and Medicine 24.1 (Spring 2005): 19-30.
"Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation." PMLA, 120.2 (May 2005):602-06 .
"Disability and Autoethnography: Riding [and Writing] the Bus with My Sister." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 34.2 (April 2005): 121-42.
"Disability as Metaphor: What's Wrong with Lying." Prose Studies, special double issue on disability, 27.1-2 (April-August 2005)): 141-54.
"Tracing The Trickster: Nanapush, Ojibwe Oral Narration,
and Tracks." Approaches to Teaching the Works of
Louise Erdrich. Ed. Greg
Sarris, Connie A. Jacobs, and James R. Giles.
"When Life Writing Becomes Death Writing: Disability and
the Ethics of Parental Euthanography." The Ethics of Life Writing. Ed. Paul
John Eakin.
"The Obituary of a Face: Lucy Grealy, Death Writing, and Posthumous Harm." Auto/Biography 12.1 (2004): 1-15.
"Identity, Identicality, and Life Writing: Telling (the Silent) Twins Apart." Biography 26.2 (Spring 2003): 243-60.
"Signifying Bodies: Life Writing and Disability
Studies." Enabling the Humanities: A Sourcebook in
Disability Studies. Ed. Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson.
"The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology."
"Making, Taking, and Faking Lives: Ethical Problems in Collaborative Life
Writing." Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics,
Culture, and Literary Theory. Ed. Todd F. Davis and
Kenneth Womack.
"Authority." 73-75.
"Authenticity." 72-73. "The Body and Life
Writing." 121-23. "Collaborative Life Writing."
222-23. "Disability and Life Writing." 177-79. "Black Elk." 118-19. The Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. Margaretta Jolly.
"Conflicting Paradigms: The Rhetorics of Disability
Memoir." Embodied Rhetorics:
Disability in Language and Culture. Ed. James C.
Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson.
"Genome and Genre: DNA and Life Writing." Biography 24.1 (Winter 2001): 185-196.
"The Empire of the `
"Critical Conditions: Teaching Illness Narrative." Teaching Literature and Medicine. Ed. Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Marilyn
Chandler McEntyre.
"Making, Taking, and Faking Lives: The Ethics of Collaborative Life Writing." Style (Summer 1998) 32.2: 334-50.
"Raising Adam: Ethnicity, Disability, and the Ethics of Life Writing in Michael Dorris's The Broken Cord." Biography 21.4 (Autumn 1998): 421-44.
"Disability and Autobiography: Enabling Discourse." Disability Studies Quarterly 17.4 (Fall 1997): 292-96.
"Benjamin Franklin: Experimental American." Introduction for section of American Literature anthology on CD-ROM. Ed. Steven E. Kagle. (3,000 words) 1996.
"Revision of the Literary Canon: The American Experience." Organon [Brasil] 10.24 (1996): 43-54.
"Family Plots: AIDS Memoirs and the Narrative of Reaffiliation." Southwest Review (Summer 1996): 404-22.
"The Hunt for `Big Red': The
"Marked Car." (Personal essay) Brown Alumni Monthly. March 1996: 56.
"Indian Preservation: Teaching Black Elk Speaks." Teaching American Ethnic Literatures Ed. David Peck and John
Maitano.
"Oppression and Repression: Personal and Cultural Memory in Paule
"Authority in Autobiography." a/b: Auto/biography Studies. 10.1 (Spring 1995): 34-49.
"Black Elk Speaks Again: Contemporary Native American Autobiography." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 7.2 (Fall 1992): 273-91.
"Illness, Disability, and Life-Writing." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 6.1 (Spring 1991). Guest editor of special issue. "Introduction: The Embodied Self." 1-7.
"Autopathography: Women, Illness, and Life-writing." 65-75.
"Seeing Through Metaphor: Teaching Figurative Literacy." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 20.2 (Spring 1990): 143-53.
"Writing the Civil War: Bierce's `Jupiter Doke, Brigadier General.'" Studies in American Fiction 18.1 (Spring 1990): 87-98.
"Maxine Hong Kingston: The Auto/biographer as Ghost-writer." Studies in Comparative Literature. Vol. III. Biography East and West.
"On `Freedom Writing': Expression and Repression." (Personal essay) Southwest Review 73.4 (Autumn 1988): 515-24.
"Black Elk Speaks With Forked Tongue." Studies in
Autobiography. Ed. James Olney.
"Autobiography as Anti-biography: The Case of Twain v. Paine." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 3.3 (Fall 1987): 13-20.
"Prose and Cons: The Autobiographies of P. T. Barnum." Southwest Review 70.4 (Autumn 1985): 451-469.
"Going After Cacciato: The Romance and The Real War." Journal of Narrative Technique 13.1 (Winter 1983): 1-10.
"Art in
"The Shape of Death in American Autobiography."
The
"Of Time and Identity: Walt Whitman and Gertrude Stein as Autobiographers." TSLL 17.4 (Winter 1976): 787-804.
"`The Old Manse,' Walden, and the Hawthorne-Thoreau Relation ship." ESQ 21.1 (First Quarter 1975): 11-20.
"Thoreau's
"The Ruined
NOTES AND REVIEWS
Rev. of Witnessing AIDS: Writing Testimony, and the Work of Mourning,
by Sarah Brophy.
Rev. of Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing, by James
Olney.
"(Un)common Conditions." Essay-review of Body,
Remember: A Memoir, by Kenny Fries; Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family,
Risk, and Genetic Research, by Alice Wexler; and The Night-Side: Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome and the Illness Experience, by Floyd Skloot.
Rev. of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American
Culture and Literature, by Rosemarie
Rev. of Witness to Sorrow: The Antebellum Autobiography of William J.
Grayson. Ed. Richard J. Calhoun.
Rev. of American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed. Paul John Eakin.
"The Power of Blackmur."
Review of Henry Adams, by R. P. Blackmur.
"An Emerson-Whitman Parallel: `The American Scholar' and `A Song
for Occupations.'" Walt Whitman Review 22.3 (September
1976): 115-18.
REPRINTS
"Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation."
PMLA, 120.2 (May 2005):602-06 . In The Disability Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lennard
Davis.
"Medical Discourse and Subjectivity."
"Raising Adam: Ethnicity, Disability, and the Ethics of Life Writing in
Michael Dorris's The Broken Cord." (Biography 21.4 [Autumn 1998]: 421-44.) Native
American Writing: Critical Assessments. Ed. A Robert
Lee.
"Two Prophetic Architects: Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright."
(American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode. 120-47.)
Rpt. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, ed. Jennifer Baise.
"Autopathography: Women, Illness, and
Life-writing." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 6.1 (Spring 1991). Rpt. Women and Autobiography. Ed.
Martine Watson Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich.
"Going After Cacciato: The Romance and
The Real War." Journal of Narrative Technique
13.1 (Winter 1983): 1-10. Rpt. DNB Documentary Series 9: American Writers of
the Vietnam War. Rpt. Baughman, Ronald, ed., American Writers of the
Vietnam War: W. D. Ehrhart, Larry Heinemann, Tim
O'Brien, Walter McDonald, John M. Del Vecchio,
"The Autobiography of Malcolm X." (From ch. 11, American Autobiography: The Prophetic Muse.)
Rpt. Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. James P.
Draper.
UNIVERSITIES AT WHICH MY WORK HAS BEEN ASSIGNED
UC Berkeley (American Studies, Spanish), Birmingham (UK), Boise State, British Columbia, Calgary, Canterbury (New Zealand), Cincinnati (Rhetoric), Columbia (Public Health and Medicine), Dowling, Exeter (UK), Gallaudet (Deaf Studies), George Washington, Illinois-Chicago (Disability Studies), Illinois State, Indiana, Miami (OH), Michigan, National Humanities Center (Summer Seminar), North Carolina (Political Science), Oberlin, Ohio State, Old Dominion (History), Padua (Italy), Pennsylvania State, Rutgers, UC San Diego, Sussex (UK), University College London, Virginia, West Georgia, Western Kentucky (Women's Life Writing), West Virginia, William and Mary (American Studies).
INVITED LECTURES OR PAPERS
"Claiming Paternity: Narratives of Filiation." Seminar on Life
Writing. Center for Biographical Research.
"Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Disability Life Writing." Rock Ethics
Institute,
"Consensual Relations: Ethicality in Disability Life Narrative." Faculty/Graduate Student Seminar. Rock Ethics Institute,
"Disability, Life Writing, and Representation."
MLA Conference on Disability Studies and the
University. Emory U,
"The Some-body Memoir." Lucy Grealy Memorial Symposium: The Memoir at the Turn of the
Century. New School,
"Representing Vulnerable Subjects: Autonomy, Auto/biography, and Biomedical
Ethics." Colloquium on Life Writing and Ethics.
"Signifying Bodies: Life Writing and Disability
Studies." Center for the Study of the
"The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology." Peter E. Herman Prize Lecture, Hofstra. October 2002.
"Narrative and Ethics." Roundtable with Susan Wendell and Hilde Lindemann Nelson. Narratives of Disease, Disability, and Trauma. UBC, Vancouver. May 2002.
"The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology." (Lecture)
"Conflicting Paradigms: The Rhetorics of Disability
Memoir." (Lecture)
"Genre and Genome: DNA and Life Writing." (Paper) Autobiography 2000. UBC, Vancouver. July 2000.
"Disability and Autobiography: Accessibility and Representation."
"Approaching the Auto/Biographical Turn." (Paper) Peking U,
"Facing and Effacing the Body." (Paper) "Facing Life" Symposium. UBC, Vancouver. February 1999.
"Revision of the Literary Canon: The American Experience." (Lecture)
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND LECTURES
"Euthanography as Quality-of-Life
Writing." American Society for Bioethics and
Humanities.
"In Celebration of Paul John Eakin: Ethics." Roundtable, MLA 2003.
"The Obituary of a Face: Lucy Grealy, Death
Writing, and Posthumous Harm." (Plenary) Annual meeting,
Auto/Biography Study Group of the British Sociological Association. U of
"Referred Pain, Conferred Pain, and Euthanasia
Narrative." MLA 2002.
"Disability and Parental Narratives of Euthanasia."
Solo session. Life Writing and the
Generations. Latrobe U,
"When Life Writing Becomes Death Writing: Parental Narratives of Euthanasia." Narratives of Disease, Disability, and Trauma. Conference. UBC, Vancouver. May 2002.
"Double Exposure: Performing Conjoined Twinship."
MLA 2001.
"Disability and Literary Studies." Chair. MLA 2000.
"Genre and Genome: DNA and Life Writing." MLA 1999.
"Crossing the Borderline (Personality): Madness Interrogated in Girl,
Interrupted."
"Monsters and Media." Moderator. ASA 1999.
"The Empire of the `
"The Ethics of Collaborative Life Writing." MLA 1997.
"In the Realm of the Senses: Inscribing the Subject of Disability." Chair. MLA 1997.
"Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back." Panel
discussion of documentary film: Chair. ASA 1997.
"HIV/AIDS, Celebrity, and Auto/biography." Popular Culture Association.
"An Eye for an I: Disability and Self-representation
in Autobiography."
"Family Plots: AIDS and the Narrative of Reaffiliation." Mid-American ASA.
"The Broken Cord and the Tradition(s) of American
Indian Autobiography." MELUS.
Roundtable on American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect.
"Crossing (Out) the Border: Autobiography and
Disability." ASA 1994.
"Self-Reconstruction: Breast Cancer Narratives." American
Literature Association.
Conference Co-Director. "First-Person Singular: Autobiography Past, Present, and Future." Hofstra, March 1994.
"Medical Discourse, Power, and Healing." Passions,
Persons, Powers.
"Teaching Figurative Literacy."
"Autopathography: Women, Illness, and Life-Writing." New Approaches to Biography: Challenges from Critical Theory. USC. October 1990.
"The
"Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory: Autobiography
as Assimilation" and "Clifford and Howard: The Case of the Counterfeit
Autobiography."
"Maxine Hong Kingston: The Auto/biographer as Ghostwriter." Biography East and West. U of
"Mark Twain and the Duplicity of Autobiography."
MLA 1986.
"`Old Times on the
"Black Elk Speaks With Forked Tongue." International Symposium on Autobiography. LSU. April 1985.
"P. T. Barnum: The Joker as Autobiographer." American
Comedy Conference.
"Identity and Community in American Autobiography."
Respondent. ASA 1983.
"
"Voice and Vision in Welty's `Why I Live At the
P.O.'" Forum on Southern Writing.
"Architecture and Literature in Mid-Nineteenth-Century
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, AWARDS, GRANTS, AND HONORS
Peter Herman E. Prize Lecture, Hofstra. 2002.
MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession, 2001-04.
Chair, Planning Committee for MLA Conference:"Disability Studies and the University" at
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers, 2001-02 (With support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).
Doctoral dissertation advisor. Liane
Schneider.
Outside dissertation reader, SUNY Buffalo, 2003.
Evaluator. "Enabling the
Humanities." Colloquium.
Manuscript evaluator: U of Illinois P, U of North Carolina P, U of Pennsylvania P, U of Wisconsin P.
Referee: American Quarterly, Annals of Internal Medicine, Auto/biography (UK), a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Equity and Excellence in Education, Genre, Life Writing Annual (AMS), Literature and Medicine, Mosaic, National Women's Study Association Journal, PMLA, Prose Studies, Signs, Third Space, Twentieth Century Literature.
Grant evaluator: NEH, 1994, 2002; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 1999, 2001, 2003.
Conference Co-director, "First-Person Singular: Autobiography Past, Present, and Future." Hofstra, March 1994.
Editorial Boards: a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 1990-. Deaf Lives series, Gallaudet UP, 2003-,
Auto/Biography (
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers, 1995-96.
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers, 1986-87.
DeGolyer Prize for Best Essay in American Studies, DeGolyer Institute, SMU, 1985.
NEH Summer Seminar. "New Approaches to American
Studies," with
Curator, exhibit of books, prints, and photos. Wallace Stevens Symposium,
Mellon Grant for summer research on new urban forms in
SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
Outside evaluator in tenure case, Howard U, 1997, Universitiy of Hartford, 2005.
Outside evaluator in promotion case: U of
Hofstra
Initiator and First Director, Disability Studies Program, 2004-
Curriculum Proposals Committee, HCLAS, 2003-2005; Chair, 2004.
Core Curriculum Committee, HCLAS, 1998-2001
Task Force on the University Bookstore, 1992-93
Charter Member, Center for Teaching Excellence, Hofstra, 1990-91
Undergraduate Academic Affairs Committee, 1991-94
University Senate, 1991-94
Director of the Graduate Program in English, 1987-88
Director of English Composition Program, 1985-86, Fall 1988
Co-Chair of the American Studies Program, 1988-
American Studies Advisory Committee, 1986-
Curriculum Proposals Committee, HCLAS, 1988-91
Departmental Executive Committee, 1988-91; Chair, 1989-91
Select Committee, Humanities Division, HCLAS, 1988-90
Committee to Design Graduate Program in Teaching Writing, 1985-86
Faculty Personnel Board, Hofstra College, 1985-86
Departmental Personnel Committee, 1985-
University Task Force on Plagiarism, 1988-89
Composition Policy Committee, 1983-86; Chair, 1985-86
Subcommittee on plagiarism, 1984-85
Contributor, Hofstra Writer's Guide
Advisor to English Club, 1983-86
Major Advisor, 1982-
Scorer, Writing Proficiency Test, 1982-2000
Director of American Studies Program, 1980-82
Director of English Honors Program, 1979-82
American Studies Committee
Graduate Studies Committee
Academic Exceptions Committee
Academic and Major Advisor
PERSONAL
Biographical Listings
Who's Who in
Memberships
Professional: American Studies Association, Modern Language Association, Society for Disability Studies
Nonprofessional: American Civil Liberties
Unprofessional: Red Sox Nation
REFERENCES
Michael Bérubé, Paterno
Family Professor in Literature, English,
Paul John Eakin, Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus
of English,
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Associate Professor of Women's Studies,